Fairies are small, flying,
human-shaped,
supernatural entities who have dragonfly-like wings, wear sexy
miniskirts
or silk negligees, and perform magic. The Tooth Fairy (TF) is a
specialist
fairy who, in English speaking countries, leaves cash (or a gift) in
exchange
for teeth.

Children lose their 20 baby
teeth –
also
called milk teeth, deciduous teeth and natal teeth – progressively from
age 5 to 12. The tooth is placed under the child's pillow or in a glass
of water and overnight TF makes the exchange.

Ken Bryndilsen, on the
Internet, says
his
son couldn't concentrate, eat or enjoy play due to a loose tooth and
therefore
he told him:

…he was acting
like a baby,
and
that I was ashamed of his lack of control. I told him that pain, like
joy,
was a part of life and that he better face the fact and deal with it…
(1989,
October 1)

After assimilating these
facts
junior, eyes
red and cheeks tear-smudged, "dealt with it" and the tooth came out.

Yes, straight talk is
effective!
Children,
however, feel connected to their teeth (pun unintended) and part with
them
more readily if paid.

Belief in fairies goes back
centuries. TF
arrived in the 19th century and became active in country
after
country. In America she bypassed immigration requirements and got
established
about 1900. As with Santa and the Easter Bunny, children considered her
a fact of life.

Dallas, Texas has America's
"only
professional
tooth fairy". Dental hygienist Jennifer Vespia used to teach oral
health
in schools but the kids were bored. Therefore she became "Sparkle the
Tooth
Fairy". Terri Rimmer reports:

She donned a set
of huge
wings,
bought a bunch of glitter and found a dentist to pay for her to educate
kids in a different way - as a Tooth Fairy…

A dental assistant for 18
years and
a professional
Tooth Fairy…for three, Vespia has created an altar ego… (2006, November
5)

What does TF do with teeth?
One
hypothesis
is she places them in the sky and they glimmer on clear nights as
stars!
Other kids think the teeth become building material to enlarge her
palace.

One Internet confession
admits to
having
believed in multiple TFs:

I believed that
they all
worked
in a little factory and when they brought teeth back, they would run
those
baby teeth through a machine that made them grow or turn into big teeth
and then the toothfairies would place those bigger teeth in your gums...

Cash-strapped kids have
been known to
practice
fraud and offer fake teeth. In America's Funniest Home Videos a
girl showed a note she received: "This is not a tooth. Signed The tooth
fairy"

Compared to Father
Christmas tooth
fairies
are tight-fisted, often paying under $5. One girl left a note for TF
stating
that a friend got $20 for a tooth – so could she have $50. TF didn't
oblige.

She managed to
raise
$10,289.45
in her "first wobbly tooth campaign" and yesterday gave that cash to
the
Gold Coast Children's Hospital… (Daily Telegraph 2007, May 26)

DOES TF EXIST?

The world's top TF
authority was
Rosemary
Wells a former Dental School professor. She created the Tooth Fairy
Museum
in 1993 in Illinois and gathered a huge collection of TF memorabilia.

Wells even researched TF
economics
and proved
that the exchange rate for teeth had kept up with inflation. The Museum
may have held definitive evidence of TF's existence, but unfortunately
for research was liquidated after Wells died.

A 50-year-old Investigator
reader
had a tooth removed in 2007. She retrieved it from the dentist the
following
day explaining she wanted to test TF's authenticity. The reader said,
"The
dentist thought I was mad!" The reader placed the tooth under her
pillow
for two nights but no cash appeared.

But not all the evidence is
negative.
An
Internet report tells how a "real life tooth fairy" assisted research
in
England into childhood asthma.

Milk teeth begin to develop
before
birth
and take up trace elements and minerals. Dr Seif Shaheen suspected that
fetuses with inadequate iron and selenium have greater risk of wheezing
in childhood and asthma later. A research project enrolled mothers to
donate
their children's milk teeth so the mineral content of teeth from
asthmatic
and non-asthmatic children could be compared:

Scientists
investigating the
rise
in asthma among Britain's children have turned to the tooth fairy
to help them in their research.

…staff…at the University
of Bristol
have
collected almost 12 thousand milk teeth.

Instead of putting them
under the
pillow
the children were asked to donate the teeth to the study. Inside the
Avon
Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, real-life tooth fairyKaijaTurvey made sure that every tooth was
rewarded with
a badge… (10/07/2003)

Lin Stone writes that
"Tooth Fairies"
are
suffering downturns in the resale market for used teeth since nobody
needs
them. However:

…A few Tooth
Fairies
have
been lucky enough to uncover a new company [BioEden] that has been
founded
to provide preser-vation service for stem cells, using primary teeth
plucked
from beneath the pillow of young children.According
to President
Jeff
Johnson, "…When
your child's tooth begins to loosen, the tooth fairy can call
us.
We will send out a kit with processing instructions, and make
arrangements
to have the tooth transported to our facility in Austin..."

The Internet has a website run by Fairyland
on which TF replies to e-mailed queries such as:

Her marital
status,
age,
language, and
where
she gets the money she swaps for teeth;

Why she didn't come – was it
too
windy?
Did
the dog scare her?

Whether she gives flying
lessons;

How one can become a fairy
or visit
Fairyland;

How long it takes a "wiggly
tooth" to
come
out;

Would she return a tooth and
take the
money
back;

Whether she could leave a
photo of
herself
;

How she sneaks her hand
under the
pillow;

Whether she gives money for
a
swallowed
tooth;

Could she stay awhile and
play;

Whether she
collects adult
teeth.

One youngster e-mailed that he pulled out
a good tooth just for the money! Another was practicing flying and had
stayed airborne 30 seconds!

There is also Tooth Fairy,
Inc.
about
which the Internet says:

Gone are the days of hiding
the
recently
loosed tooth under the pillow and finding the shiny coin the next
morning.
It's getting too cost prohibitive for the Tooth Fairy… Fuel costs are
up,
and inflation dictates greater payout values…

Instead of 'pillowing' the
tooth, the
child
can, with adult assistance, package it up and ship it to one of Tooth
Fairy,
Inc.'s regional tooth exchange depots, where it will be received,
registered,
appraised, and a check for the appropriate amount mailed out to the
child
right away.(March 23 2003)

SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS

Kids with milk teeth number 500
million
worldwide.
Let's assume

TF takes no vacations

TF visits only 20% of kids

Each kid loses two teeth per year.

From these assumptions it
follows that
TF visits over 500,000 homes every night!

This hectic schedule is
impossible to
maintain
which "Debbie" confirms as follows:

The Tooth Fairy was late
arriving at
our
house one day and we were able to delay our daughter's disappointment
by
telling her that there are so many people that…she gets there late.
Well,
she arrived when the daughter was taking her bath and left her a $5
bill…
(2007, April 11)

"Lucy B"
says TF missed her
8-year-old
daughter:"And to make matters worse,
her
11-year-old
brother had a visit from TF the very night before… Disappointment (and
tears) reigned…" (2007, April 5)

Logistical problems of
transporting
quantities
of teeth and cash are similar to those of Father Christmas discussed in
Investigator 45 and 93.

Some people think TF magically
changes
the
teeth into money, and thus avoids transport problems, but Investigator
writer Kirk Straughen has effectively criticized belief in magic.

The shortest distance
connecting 500,000
points separated by up to half the circumference of the planet is
unsolved
but would total millions of kilometres. TFs blistering speed would burn
her miniskirt off from air friction! Her velocity would exceed that of
meteorites entering the atmosphere – and meteorites burn up!

Perhaps TF uses a nuclear
powered
airplane?
This would protect her miniskirt and permit transport of teeth and
cash.
But a large, high-velocity craft violating national air space would be
noticed! And landing without permission in residential areas would
incur
fines and court appearances.

Furthermore, to enter
strangers' houses
uninvited
at night would be a police matter! And how does TF obtain children's
addresses?
Mere possession would be highly suspicious!

These are confronting
considerations, but
search for truth is never easy. A plausible solution is that there's a
leading TF who has many assistant fairies!

ORIGINS

Many ancient societies
considered
teething
a milestone and had rituals associated with it.

In Medieval Europe witches used
hair,
fingernails
and teeth for cursing people and therefore proper disposal of body
pieces
was paramount. Throwing the item onto the roof, swallowing, feeding to
an animal, burning, and burial in the ground were all used.

The tooth mouse or "the little
mouse"
appeared
in 18th century France in the children's story La Bonne
Petite
Souris in which a fairy in the form of a mouse helps a queen defeat
an evil king.

"Ratoncito Pérez" was
introduced
in
1894 by priest Luis Coloma (1851-1915) when the Crown asked Coloma to
write
a tale for the 8 year old Alfonso XIII after a tooth fell out.

After that teeth and fairies
increasingly
got together and pillows substituted for burial.

A writer on the Internet
considered the
tooth
mouse a "cheap bastard" because: "I once left my two front teeth under
my pillow and only got 20 lousy pesos. Being toothless and broke sucks."

Italy has both tooth fairy and
tooth
mouse.
Scotland has a white fairy rat which buys teeth with coins. In some
Asian
countries, such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam, when a child loses a tooth
it's thrown onto the roof if it came from the lower jaw and under the
floor
if it came from the upper jaw.

TF entered American literature
in a
children's
play published in 1927, followed in 1949 by Lee Rothgow's storybook The
Tooth Fairy. After that TF's popularity rapidly grew.

MOVIES AND NOVELS

In the movie Santa Steps
Out: A Fairy
Tale for Grown-Ups, the Tooth Fairy seduces Santa Claus. In Santa
Clause 2 and Santa Clause 3, Art LaFleur plays TF. He is
part
of a council of folk characters headed by Mother Nature that helps
Santa
Claus return to the North Pole.

Kirstie Alley in Toothless
plays
a
deceased dentist who serves as the Tooth Fairy to avoid going to Hell.

The novel Hogfather
(Terry
Pratchett)
has TF subcontracting teeth-collection and collecting them so that they
can't be misused with magic.

Tasty Teeth (G Del Toro
& M
Robbins)
tells of a tribe of fairies who suck the marrow from children's bones.
The Pope negotiates an end to this practice with the King of the
Fairies
by allowing tooth fairies to take teeth children lose but pay a silver
coin. (From: Wikipedia)

REALIZATION

On the "I Used To Believe"
website
"Barbara"
says she tested whether the tooth fairy was real by putting a newly
lost
tooth under her pillow without telling her parents:"The next morning, there was
no money!
That
day I pretended to my parents that the tooth had just fallen out, and
the
morning after that, there was the money under my pillow. Proof that my
parents were behind the tooth fairy scam!"

And "Dev" says:
"I faked I was still asleep,
but I saw
the
truth. My mother WAS the tooth fairy!!"

Elsewhere "Andrew" confesses:"Whenever I lost a tooth I put
it by my
pillow and the tooth fairy replaced it with $1. When I turned 17 I
realized
that the tooth fairy was my parents. I did not tell them that I knew,
and
kept getting $1 until I was 35."

The Internet has some actual
parental
confessions.
Marybeth Hicks fell asleep while her 7-year-old daughter stayed awake
"to
see the tooth fairy…maybe play together". Next morning daughter found
her
tooth still there and, sobbing, declared, "The Tooth Fairy didn't even
care." Hicks admits that she dashed off a letter containing $1, signed
"Tooth Fairy", stating she couldn't get into the house due to locked
doors.